Hey Gabbi! (For some reason I can't reply to your comments, so I thought I'd try posting a separate one.) I think it depends on the individual story. For this book, while there were many things outside the parent/family issue, I think maybe having him stay with a family friend or a relative that wasn't known for mental instability would have helped. In my own books, I've done different things. One story has a main character whose mother is dead and whose father is loving but struggles to stay connected with the family since her death. The main character spends most of the book trapped elsewhere, anyway, with no way to contact her family. Another story has two main characters, one of whom is distant from her parents due to money while the other loves her dad and stepmom but is bitter over her mother's leaving (her mom chose to leave her and her father after a miscarriage). The two girls swap lives temporarily and live with the other's family for the duration of the story (sort of prince and the pauper style). In another book of mine, the main character is very close to both her parents and her little brother, but her parents aren't around the kids much because the family is barely scraping by, so the parents work a lot.

I loved this book so much. I think, from my POV as a bigger Dystopian fan than you tend to be, that the descriptions that put you off really made the book in a way. They were intended to put people off, the way many parts of the Hunger Games were. Those descriptions served their exact purpose, like you said, to show just how low the Safe Lands people had sunk without even realizing it.

As for the no-easy-ways-out, YES! Jill is amazing and that was just awesome, over and over again. ^.^